Free Silence by Mechtild Borrmann

the Kalders’ first, mind. Whatever you do, don’t go straight to the tower.”
    Siegmund Pohl opened the drawer in her bedside table and placed the leather wallet inside.
    She risked another whispered question. “Who are those papers for?”
    He leaned forward. “For people who must urgently leave this country.”
    He kissed her on the forehead and stood up with effort. She pulled him back by the hand.
    “They say you’re a collaborator.”
    Siegmund Pohl looked at her seriously. “I’m a Christian, Therese. A Christian and a democrat.”
    Once her father had left, she took out the leather wallet and opened it. Van de Kerk. Henk van de Kerk, Sophie van de Kerk, and their children Hendrika and Jan. And a young woman, not much older than her. Leni Platjes.
    Therese swallowed. She knew the woman. She wasn’t Leni Platjes. She was Karla Goldbach, who had done her final exams at her school two years before.
    Years later, Therese Mende had told her husband that she made a decision that night. That seemed smug now. She had not made a decision. She had wanted to do her battered father this favor. That was all.
    The next day, immediately after breakfast, she took her bicycle and rode to the Kalder estate. When she arrived, she asked whether Alwine would be coming home that weekend, and whether they had heard from Jacob. She was given a large cup of hot coffee in the kitchen, and Martha, the maid, related the latest gossip. Nobody mentioned her father, though she was sure they all knew about his arrest. Old Martha patted her on the head as she set off. The leaves of the blackberry bushes along the track glowed in tones of fuchsia and terra-cotta, and when she reached the forest path, the light dripped like honey through the autumn foliage. The clearing appeared in front of her, quite unexpectedly, after a few minutes. She leaned her bicycle against a tree and pushed on through tall grasses and ferns. Her heart was hammering wildly, and as she climbed the steps, she felt her arms and legs trembling. The trapdoor was heavy. She found the loose plank in the wall, pushed the tightly wrapped packet inside, and replaced the plank. On the way back to the Kalder estate, she kept looking around, as if she expected to be followed. It was not until she had passed the farmhouse that her heartbeat calmed down.
    Her father recovered, but when he opened his practice again, only a few patients continued to come. People did not want to be seen with him, and sometimes there was a note in his mailbox: could he perhaps come by that evening—the newborn had a bad cough, the son had had a fall, or the old mother couldn’t keep anything down. So it came about that what Margarete Pohl had claimed in the preceding months actually became true. Her husband was out half the night. He was making house calls.

Chapter 14

    April 22, 1998
    When Rita Albers dialed the Spanish telephone number, it was a Luisa Alfonsi who answered, and there was a short pause before a self-confident voice announced itself as “Mende.”
    Rita introduced herself, and was hesitating before making her request, when the woman firmly interrupted.
    “I know who you are. Get to the point.”
    Rita was thrown off balance, but she tried not to show how rattled she was. How did Mende know who she was?
    “It’s about your marriage to Wilhelm Peters,” she said quickly.
    The woman at the other end of the line reacted immediately. “And?”
    “Well, I’d very much like to interview you.”
    “I don’t give interviews.”
    Rita swallowed hard. She had assumed she would have the element of surprise on her side.
    “But you don’t deny that you were married to Wilhelm Peters, and that you were suspected of his murder when he disappeared?”
    “If you think you’ve dug up a good story here, you’re mistaken. Keep your nose out of it,” Mende replied bluntly.
    Rita gasped. Who did this woman think she was?
    “I’m a journalist, and I’m working on a story, and if you don’t